Collecting History: John Peel, J Dilla, and the Record as Artifact

Blues historian Robert Palmer once asked, "How much history can be transmitted by pressure on a guitar string?" For record collectors, the question might be posed one degree further out, "pressure on a guitar string" replaced by "a needle tracing a groove." Or, since records have long been enjoyed as both material objects and carriers of sound, by "vinyl and cardboard sitting on a shelf." The collections of two eccentric, passionate record geeks-- BBC DJ John Peel and experimental rap producer J Dilla-- both made news in the last couple of weeks, raising a question that only seems to dissipate as digital code further envelops music: How does a legacy become embedded in thousands of cheaply produced artifacts?

Eight years after his death, Peel's gigantic record collection is being made available for browsing, in a manner of speaking, via the BBC and Arts Council England. An online arts platform called The Space has created a virtual representation of Peel's actual studio, with clickable links that display his actual alphabetized shelves. Clicking "letters" on those shelves allows one to "browse" at a distance, "picking out certain choice records and going through the first 100 as though you were standing in front of the shelves in John's studio," in the words of project overseer Tom Barker. It's an amazingly put-together website. Funding restraints mean that small alphabetical chunks will be released weekly-- at the time of writing, only "A" is available-- but this limitation would seem only to help neatly guide browsing the 70,000 items.

The website is able to recreate the unique visual aura of the room to a high degree. You can't touch anything, but you get a sense of the texture and detail of the records in his collection. You can see Mike Absalom's Save the Last Gherkin for Me!, and if you look closely enough, you can see a small sticker on the upper left corner of the sleeve that reads "A 0001," denoting that this was the very first record in John Peel's collection. Three records prior is Peel's copy of Above the Law's 1990 gangsta rap opus Livin' Like Hustlers (A 21183). You can Tweet these links, or share them on Facebook.

But the aural aspect of the Peel archive is another thing altogether. Visitors can't listen to Peel's copy of the Livin' Like Hustlers LP-- like so many still-in-copyright recordings in this archive, the technological and legal logistics of such a feature would likely be insurmountable-- but instead are linked to the album on Spotify. As Tom Ewing pointed out on Tumblr, the limited access to the archive could be likely be solved via BitTorrent and blogs in a few months, by alphabetizing Peel's list and letting "the crowd" do its thing.

The Absalom LP is a different case altogether. Clicking on a Soundcloud link, you can actually listen to the whole thing, and by right-clicking on the tracks, you can download them. For me, this triggered a brief technological quandary that calls into sharp relief the idea of musical possession in the mp3 age. Of course I started downloading this album immediately (why? Because I can, that's why), but then I thought: What do I actually gain by acquiring a compressed digital copy of this record and filing it away in my own archive (iTunes)? My ersatz access is certainly a world away from, say, buying the record at an auction, where I can convince myself I was in possession of a thing that Peel himself once owned. But what sort of artifact is a download? A souvenir of my "visit" to the Peel archive, like a program, or in a slightly different example, perhaps a snapshot of myself in front of it? Would my (imaginary) Last.fm followers be impressed by Absalom scrobbling up on my "most played" list? Digital technologies allow access to what the physical artifact "holds," but not the artifact itself.

This is an important distinction, because with vinyl, listening histories are embedded into the objects themselves. A bent corner might mean a lower resale value, but it's also a battle scar. There's a reason why the rings that emerge as the vinyl presses against the weaker cardboard for too long are often recreated for brand new albums. They're a veneer-- what antiques dealers call "patina"-- but one that signifies a sense of the "lived-with" nature of an album.

The Peel archive privileges wide access to a mediated version of his collection over another archive ideology that they might have chosen: a strictly patrolled, IRL-only museum-- the Graceland model. The rapturous reception the website's received since being announced indicates they chose wisely. But the record collection belonging to J Dilla is another story. Dilla had 7,000-8,000 records locked away in a Detroit storage locker. While that's certainly a less sophisticated mechanism for an archive, his mother, Maureen Yancey, claims he had it memorized regardless. "He knew every record, where it was at, what record it was next to, what record was two records from it, which hand, right hand or left hand of each shelf," she told TheDetroit News. Upon receiving notice that the locker would be shut down due to unpaid bills, Dilla requested certain albums to be mailed to him, and the rest left to sit.

Royal Oak record-store owner Jeff Bubeck acquired this collection recently, and, claiming he couldn't get in touch with the Yancey family, put them up for sale at his store, promising to donate a portion of the proceeds to the J Dilla Foundation. For many locals and Dilla devotees, this sort of generic capitalist flip was a crass way to honor Dilla's legacy. That they might have been abandoned surplus items was irrelevant: These were a legendary artist's raw materials. Bubeck "was besieged with negative comments online about the sale of the records," according to The Detroit News and temporarily pulled them from shelves, pending a conversation with Yancey.

Yet via a recent Facebook update, Bubeck indicates that Yancey's wishes for her son's records don't neatly slot into a philosophy of a managed collection for all to access in some fashion. "Mrs Yancey doesn't want 8000 records, she needs $$," Bubeck wrote, noting that The J Dilla Foundation, set up to fund inner-city music education, could use the money his collection could easily bring in. As tacky as music fans might think selling Dilla's albums at a run-of-the-mill record store might be, it's a fact that archives are often incredibly expensive endeavors. The Peel archive is part of a larger, £3.5 million fund, which it shares with dozens of other public arts projects, and which is set to dry up by October. Organizing and freezing a large collection in space and time is a luxury that few have.

The act of archiving an extensive record collection, whether it's one's own personal set or that of a legend, is founded on the idea that space exists to hold time. A 12" LP record or a 7" single is a delivery mechanism for particular durations of music. Store a bunch of these in the same space, and there are days, possibly months, of music, neatly filed (digitally, of course, this can be quantified down to the second). This is why one of the first questions people ask of collectors is, "When in the world do you have the time to listen to all of this stuff?" For collectors like Dilla and Peel, the act of accumulation-- building a library or simply hoarding-- is as much a part of the appeal as is actually listening to (or "using") the music. But these records take up space on shelves, and when one's collecting passion supersedes one's physical accommodations, tough decisions need to be made.

Though a record store cash register might be a rather sterile intermediary between a music legend's own LP and its new owner, other forms of exchange can be incredibly meaningful. The Roots' drummer and all-around musical diplomat ?uestlove told Pitchfork the story of the last time he got to see Dilla at his home, just before he died. "He gave me his prized possession record, and that really scared me. It's a very rare Brazilian Stevie Wonder EP. He said, 'This is for you.' And I was like, 'Why? You've had this for so long.' I didn't want to take it because it seemed too final. His mom came up behind me and put it in my hands." ?uestlove didn't go on to say what he did with this EP. Did he frame it? Put it in a safe-deposit box? Donate it to an archive? Or just maybe, does he work it into his DJ sets-- dropping the stylus into those particular grooves and activating deep memories of the last hours of his friend James.